Jimmy Kimmel Recounts the Moment He Learned His Show Was Suspended: “I Thought, That’s It. I’m Never Coming Back.”
Jimmy Kimmel is opening up about the day he thought his career had ended.
Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Tuesday night, the 57-year-old host gave a candid, often wry retelling of the moment ABC briefly suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! last month after his controversial comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“An Emotional Rollercoaster”
“It was around 3:00. We tape our show at 4:30. I’m in my office typing away as I usually do,” Kimmel recalled. “I get a phone call — it’s ABC, they say they want to talk to me.”
He joked that such a call was unusual: “As far as I knew, they didn’t even know I was doing the show previous to this.”
But the light tone quickly faded. Kimmel said he took the call in the bathroom, hoping for privacy, only to learn the network had decided to pull that night’s episode.
“They said, ‘Listen, we wanna take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re gonna say tonight. And we’ve decided that the best route is to take the show off the air.’”
Kimmel protested. “I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ And they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea.’ And then there was a vote and I lost the vote.”
“Whiter Than Jim Gaffigan”
Kimmel described walking back to his office to break the news to his team. “There were about nine people in there, and I said, ‘They’re pulling the show off the air.’”
His wife Molly McNearney, who also serves as an executive producer, later told him he looked “whiter than Jim Gaffigan.”
“At that moment, I thought, that’s it. It’s over. I’m never coming back on the air,” Kimmel admitted.
A Studio Full of Waiting Fans
By the time he received the call, the live audience was already seated inside the El Capitan Theatre. Kimmel said he stayed in the building for a few more hours, fielding calls while paparazzi gathered outside.
“TMZ, people jumping in front of me on the way home. There are two helicopters flying over following us,” he said. “Meanwhile, I hadn’t had makeup on yet, so my bald spot was not painted in.”
At home, his kids provided comic relief. “Our daughter, who is 11 years old, says, ‘I can sell my labubus.’ It was very sweet. Our son just got naked and started running around the house.”
Three Days of Silence
Kimmel compared the suspension to “getting a DUI in L.A.”
“I spent three days where I couldn’t say anything and I had to sit quiet and make a lot of phone calls and take a lot of phone calls,” he said.
The network confirmed the suspension lasted five days in total. Disney explained it wanted “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” calling parts of Kimmel’s monologue “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
A Triumphant, Complicated Return
On Sept. 22, Disney announced Jimmy Kimmel Live! would return the next night. His comeback drew a record 6.5 million viewers, though ratings fell sharply in subsequent days.
During that first episode back, Kimmel addressed the uproar but stopped short of a full apology. Instead, he acknowledged his comments while also taking repeated swipes at former President Donald Trump and FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who had publicly criticized him.
The host’s stance was defiant: doubling down on his belief that late-night satire shouldn’t be muzzled, even when emotions run high.
Why It Matters
Kimmel’s suspension and return mark one of the most dramatic chapters in recent late-night history. The episode highlights the tightrope networks walk between appeasing affiliates, advertisers, and regulators, while still preserving the edge that makes live comedy resonate.
For Kimmel personally, it also underscored the vulnerability behind the monologues. “That’s really what I thought,” he told Colbert of the moment he learned the show was off the air. “It’s over.”
Instead, he returned to one of the largest audiences of his career — proof that even in controversy, late-night still has the power to galvanize.
